Did The Earth Move? (22 page)

'You know if I'm totally, totally honest with you, I just don't enjoy anything any more.'

Eve watched her sister's plain brown bob, silvered with strands of grey, dip down as Janie bent her head over her teacup.

She stirred at the tea over and over again, although the milk was long mixed in, then
ting ting-ed
on the rim of the cup several times and finally laid the spoon down. Eve had been surprised to get the call from her sister earlier in the week. It had been ages since Janie had come to visit her in London, but here she was, drinking tea in the kitchen, looking so sad and serious.

Watching her, Eve couldn't help thinking that there had been a time when Janie, although never beautiful, would always have been described as striking . . . elegant. But now she looked drab. And even worse, her once uncork-able energy seemed to have run dry.

The bob, no doubt expensively cut, was un-dyed and didn't really suit her long, angular face. Her charcoal grey, unlined linen trouser suit didn't help either. Janie looked dull, Eve saw as she studied her now – saggy, sad and shapeless. Middle-aged was the word that came to Eve's mind.

The lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth were deepening and her face was about to set into a downturned, downcast expression of vague disappointment. She probably had those half-moon reading specs with a long chain somewhere in her briefcase-cum-handbag. And no doubt, if someone was introduced to the two of them now, they would assume that Janie was older than Eve, not the other way around.

Eve didn't think this with any sort of smugness. It pained her to see her sister like this. 'You know . . .' Janie looked up from her tea again with tear-filled eyes, 'Cooking, for example. There was a time when I loved to cook, I'd buy the latest books, spend the whole of Saturday hunting down the best ingredients and it was a pleasure. Now I just feel like all these meals are coming at me, relentlessly, day in day out... breakfast, packed lunches, snacks, supper, four meals a day at the weekend. It's a nightmare. It's a full-time job just making sure that the fridge is full – and then there's all the bloody housework and washing and homework and listening to all this teenage
moaning,
and I have a full-time job on top of that which is
damn
stressful. And hardly surprising . . . my husband finds me boring. I am boring! And I'm bored . . . bored beyond belief!' Eve saw the little spurt of tears start down her sister's cheeks.

'Oh, Janie,' she said and stroked her sister's hand.

'I don't want to live like this any more,' Janie sobbed. 'Waking up every morning going through a mental checklist of everything I've got to do . .. existing in a house with such a miserable atmosphere . . . someone about to explode with anger or burst into tears at any time. I don't want it. I can't stand it.'

Eve carried on with the hand-stroking.

'What is it all for?' Janie demanded. 'What am I working myself this hard for? Why am I struggling to push my ungrateful children into the best universities? I suddenly haven't a clue what this is all about any more.'

Eve let her cry for as long as she needed to without saying anything.

'And I'm here, Eve,' Janie said finally, smudging at the tears on her face, 'because I always feel there's fun and ... I don't know... a lightness to your life and to your family and I want to know how you do that.'

Janie looked properly round the kitchen now: at the mismatched pottery on the table, the crusted plates stacked on top of the dishwasher, the treasured baby paintings unpeeling from the fridge, plants in luscious health on every windowsill and the remains of cat food clinging to the sides of the bowl by the back door. The place was a mess, the floor was sticky and Janie had found herself scraping crumbs off the waxed tablecloth as she waited for her tea. But . . . but. . . but... it smelled delicious. Soup or something was cooking on the hob, the bread-maker was clanking its way through a program ... and it felt so relaxed. She sat at this table and knew Eve had time. Time for tea, time for talking. Later on, there would be a bottle of wine opened and they would sit out in the garden drinking just a little bit too much. They would eat something cobbled together from the kitchen and Anna and Robbie, currently playing a noisy game of hide-and-seek outside the opened back door would scutter in and out, before finally disappearing off to bed. It was relaxed... happy.

Could it have been a bigger contrast to her home??? Where no-one came by unannounced, they came for dinner – proper with three courses and gourmet cheese and vintage liqueurs to follow.

Her house was sleek, white, beige, greige . . . maple floors, banisters which were regularly polished, sofa covers which had to be dry-cleaned three times a year ... a stainless steel kitchen which showed up four fingerprints every time you opened a drawer.

And in a funny way, Janie thought now, her house was quiet. Apart from door slamming. David hiding in his office behind a slammed door, Christine in her room on the phone behind a slammed door, Rick going out of the front door in a huff... SLAM.

She sometimes had the radio on, quiet Radio Four, but Eve's house was a racket. Robbie and Anna laughing and shrieking, the telly, videos, the phone ringing a lot, Eve's own taste in music which veered from classical to the kind of get down with the kids anthems on in the background now.

'Oh boy . . .' Eve was telling her, with a big sigh. 'We've had our really tough times in this house too, you know. Don't go thinking everything's perfect, because it's not. There's plenty of stuff I fret about in the small hours once in a while. I mean look at me! Why am I still single?!'

'But you enjoy life, don't you?' Janie asked and hoped it didn't sound too accusing.

'Of course I do, hon. Some of it's a drag and some days are a bummer ... but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to be here.'

Janie looked at her older sister and saw how she oozed – what exactly? A sort of fizz of care-freeness. Yes, maybe that was it. She wasn't burdened with the weight of what other people thought of her all the time, like Janie was. Worried, worried, all the time: did her lawyer colleagues think she was good enough? What would her friends think? Were the other children's parents doing this? What would Dad think? But there was Eve, single, hair far too long and blond for someone in their forties, clothes far too bright and tight, house a state, piss-poor career, accidental
babies,
listening to club music with her tin of marijuana on the top of the kitchen cupboards and she was
happy.
That elusive emotion which seemed to have bypassed Janie completely. And Janie's husband and, even worse, her children.

'I don't have any advice for you,' Eve said, wondering if wine would have been a better bet than tea. 'I don't like giving advice. All I can tell you is that I've tried to work out what really matters to me, what I really want to be doing and ... well... stuff the rest.'

Much later in the evening, when they were two bottles of wine down and Eve had finally persuaded her strait-laced sister to
for God's sake
take a drag, no she wouldn't get arrested and barred from the bench and stripped of her wig and gown for the rest of her life ... they giggled their way through a very long list of the things that Janie should just stuff.

Doing all the shopping, cooking and cleaning for starters.

'Are you completely mad?' Eve told her. 'Are you not in possession of an able-bodied husband and two able assistants who can do the supermarket run while you lounge in the bath under a face pack reading
Hello!
and fantasizing about being married to Antonio Banderas or whoever does it for you?'

Snorts of laughter to this.

'And you know, maybe you should take a holiday, just on your own, Janie, and do relaxing things. Massages, waxing – I don't know . . . What do barristers do to relax? Go and get spanked or something... put in handcuffs. Isn't that it?'

More laughter.

'And stuff your perfect house. I mean it's lovely—' Eve wasn't so far out of it that she'd lost all sense of tact completely – 'but it is so high maintenance. I have actually let my children eat off your floors. Well...' she ducked down under the kitchen table at this point, 'they eat off mine too. Because there's so much nice stuff down there.' She came back up with a very grubby looking square of jam toast: 'See.'

Janie began to laugh now, so hard that soon her cheeks were hurting and then her stomach muscles.

'God, I'm such a slob,' Eve said. 'You're really regretting this trip now, aren't you?' You're thinking, "If that's on the kitchen floor what the hell am I going to find in the sofa bed?"'

'Stop it.' Janie was crying with laughter now. 'Stop it, I'm going to wee.'

'Oh my God, Janie,' Eve said, deadpan. 'You're scarily high.'

'I'm not am I?' Terrified look on the barrister's face now.

'No. You're fine. This is called enjoying yourself.' Eve said this slowly, as if trying to make herself understood in a foreign country. 'You may have had enough enjoyment for one night now, we will have to bring you down slowly.'

She looked at her sister, flushed with laughter and wine, looking a lot softer round the edges than she had for a long time.

'You need to let go a little, maybe,' Eve added. 'Let go of trying to do everything, trying to control everything. Your kids will appreciate you all the more if you cut them some slack. I promise, they are good kids, they'll be fine ... in the long run. Who cares if they get into a few scrapes when they're young and silly? That's how they learn. Remember when Tom got hooked into that stupid sales scam? What was it again? Herbal slimming pills or something. God, I can't believe I can't remember it now. It all seemed so big at the time! He was almost £1,000 in debt before he told me what was going on. Silly twink.'

The two sisters looked at each other and burst into fresh giggles.

'And I seriously think you need new hair and new pants,' Eve added.

'What!' Janie shrieked.

'Well, I'd like to drag you out kicking and screaming for a whole new wardrobe. But I think it would be too much hard work, trying to drown out the voice of your inner barrister. But new hair and new pants would be a start, get you out of this sort of boring, middle-aged, frump thing going on here.'

She reached over and twanged at the top of Janie's elasticated trousers revealing, as expected, greying briefs encased in American tan tights.

'Yuck,' Eve said, pulling a face. "This is all very practical, but . . . yuck. What we want is you sitting in your boring, barrister suits and thinking, "Yes, I know I look dull, but I'm wearing very racy pink pants ..."'

'And better hair, darlink, better hair.' Eve couldn't help lapsing into Harry speak now. 'Harry must take a look at this bob, darlink, and work his magic.'

And so it was that at about 3p.m. the next day the two sisters pulled up chairs in one of those expensive, marble-topped-table cafes where everything comes with quadruple whipped cream, still in a whirl of breathless
'do you like it? Are you sures?'
about their new hair. Sneaking peaks in the mirrors, in shop windows, still not quite recognizing their reflections.

Eve's blond tresses had been streaked with bright girlie pink.

'I'm not too old for pink hair, I promise I'm not – and no, I don't want washable, I want permanent pink ... for the wedding,' she'd assured Harry, who had expressed reservations as he'd gowned her up and listened to her request. But when the striped candyfloss head had emerged, he'd had to agree. No she wasn't too old for pink hair. She looked ... hmmm ... a lovely mixture of rosy, flushed and groovy.

Eve's courage had forced Janie to be bold too.

She now had sleek, short hair tucked in around her small ears and round the nape of her neck in a dark, conker brown.

'We're looking good, honey, I promise,' Eve told her as they sipped at the ludicrous mountains of cream.

Scrunched up between their feet on the floor were plastic and paper bags full of pants, bras, hipster knickers . . . G-strings! After the initial shock, Janie had decided to go for it – green, pink, orange, turquoise, even glitzy silver smalls were in the bags.

'Promise me you'll wear them in court,' Eve had said loudly in the changing room.

'For goodness sake!' Janie had shooshed her.

But Eve had rather been looking forward to the intrigued look on the face of the saleswoman as they came out.

'I'm sure she thinks we're lesbians,' Janie, flustered, had whispered as they made their way out of the shop.

'I know.' Eve threaded her arm through her sister's. 'Be a shame to disappoint her.' She'd licked Janie on the ear.

'Get off! Are you insane?'

'Just a London girl, you uptight, Home Counties mum.'

'Please can I be just a little bit more like you?'

'Yes. But can I remind you once, way back, when I wanted to be like you too?'

'D'you think you'll actually wear any of them?' Eve was asking her now.

'Of course! You don't think I'd waste money on knickers for the back of my drawer!'

'Will David get to see them?'

'Well... ummm...' Janie picked up her spoon and began twiddling with it again. 'You know, I think David and I need to be apart for a while.' She looked up at Eve. 'And I've only just decided that today.'

'Hairstyle changes,' Eve couldn't help saying. 'They're scary.'

Janie just smiled at her. Then after a long thoughtful pause, she added: 'I've been married for sixteen years, Eve. That's a very long time. A very long time to be half of a couple, to be a wife, a parent, to be constantly compromising what I want with "What would David want? What would the children want?" I hope I don't sound like the most selfish woman on the planet, but I feel like I've forgotten myself, I've forgotten who I am and what I want or like, God, even what I like to eat or drink. Prawns for example—' she was almost laughing now. 'I don't think I've had prawns, hot, fried with garlic, all juicy in their shells with a little squeeze of lemon . . .' She broke off and tilted her head thoughtfully. 'You know, I've probably eaten them three times since I got married, even though I love them, because David is allergic to them.'